How to be Food Label Savvy

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How to be Food Label Savvy

• By
• Shannon Kelley

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1- Start with the Serving Size 2- Total Calories
Calories from fat 3- Limit these
Nutrients 4- Get enough of these Nutrients 5-
Percent Daily Value (DV) 6- Foot Note
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SERVING SIZE

• Pay Attention to the Serving Size
• Serving size based on amount of food people
  typically eat
• Serving size provided in familiar terms (cups,
  pieces, oz) followed by the metric amount (
  grams)

                                    
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Calories and Calories from Fat

• Calories provided from one serving of food item
• Includes how many calories from fat in serving
  of food item
• Dietitians typically recommend that no more
  than 30 of your
• daily calories should come from fat. If you
  were eating a 2,000
• calorie diet, that would mean that no more
  than 600 of these
• calories should come from fat.

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Limit These Nutrients

• Nutrients listed first are the ones Americans
  generally eat in
• adequate amounts
• Listing of Trans fats (artery clogging fats)
  will not be required by FDA until
• Jan. 1, 2006.
• Eating too much fat, saturated fat, trans fat,
  and cholesterol, or sodium
• may increase your risk of developing certain
  chronic diseases like heart
• disease, some cancers, or high blood
  pressure.

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Get Enough of these Nutrients

• Americans often dont get enough dietary fiber,
  vitamin A,
• vitamin C, calcium and iron in their diets.
• Getting enough of these nutrients helps reduce
  the risk of
• some diseases and conditions (osteoporosis,
  anemia)

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The Percent Daily Value (DV)

• DV tells you whether the nutrients (fat,
  sodium,
• fiber, etc) in a serving of food contribute
  a lot or a
• little to your total daily diet.
• DV are based on recommendations for a 2,000
• calorie diet.
• DV helps you interpret the numbers (grams
  and
• milligrams) by putting them on the same
  scale (0-100)
• A general guide to follow is that 5DV or less
  is low
• and 20 or more is high.
• DV also makes it easy for you to make
  comparisons
• You can compare one product or brand to a
  similar
• product- It is easy to see which one is
  higher or lower in
• a nutrient because the serving sizes are
  generally
• consistent for similar foods

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Nutrients that Have No DV

• Trans Fat Scientific reports link trans fats
• (and saturated fat) with raising LDL
  (bad) blood cholesterol levels, US experts
  could not provide a reference value for trans fat
  in order to establish a Daily Value or DV
• Sugars No daily reference value has yet been
  established because no recommendations have been
  made for the total amount of sugars to eat in a
  day. The sugars listed include both naturally
  occurring sugars (in milk, and fruit) as well as
  added sugars. Check the ingredient list for
  specifics on added sugars.
• Protein DV is only required if the product
  makes a claim such as high protein, or if the
  product is to be used by infants and children
  under 4 years old. Scientific evidence indicates
  that protein intake is not a public health
  concern.

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The Footnote

• Footnote in the lower part of the nutrition
  label tells you that the DVs
• are based on recommendations for a 2,000
  calorie diet.
• If you eat 2,000 calories a day, it indicates
  you should eat less than 65 grams of fat in
  all the foods you eat in a day. By doing this,
  you will follow nutrition experts advice to
  consume no more than 30 of daily calories from
  fat.

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Nutrient Content Claims

• FREE- Indicates that a product contains no
  amount, or a trivial amount of fat, sat fat,
  cholesterol, sodium, sugars, and calories.
• Calorie free 5 calories or less per serving
• Sugar free and fat free both mean less than
  0.5g per serving
• LOW- Can be used on foods that can be eaten
  frequently without exceeding dietary guidelines.
• low-fat- 3g or less per serving
• low-saturated fat 1g or less per serving
• very low sodium 140 mg or less per serving
• low-cholesterol 20 mg or less and 2g or less
  of saturated fat
• per serving
• low-calorie- 40 calories or less per serving

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Nutrient Content Claims continued

• HIGH- term can can used if the food contains 20
  or more of
• the DV for a particular nutrient serving
• GOOD SOURCE- term can be used if one serving of
  food contains 10-19 of DV for a particular
  nutrient
• REDUCED- term means that a nutritionally altered
  product contains at leas 25 less of
  nutrient/calories than the regular product.
• LESS- terms means that a food, whether altered or
  not, carries 25 less of a nutrient or of
  calories than the reference food. (Pretzels have
  25 less fat than potato chips)
• LIGHT- Can mean two things
• 1. A nutritionally altered product contains
  one-third fewer calories, or half the fat of the
  reference food.
• 2. The sodium content of a low-calorie,
  low fat food has been reduced by 50. Light in
  sodium

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Healthy Claim

• Healthy- to carry the healthy claim a food
  must be low in fat, saturated fat, and contain
  limited amounts of cholesterol and sodium. If
  its a single- item food, it must also provide at
  least 10 percent of one or more of vitamins A or
  C, iron, calcium, protein or fiber. If its a
  meal-type product, such as a frozen entrees or
  multi-course frozen dinner, it must provide 10
  percent of two or three of these
  vitamins/minerals or of protein/fiber in addition
  to meeting the sodium content criteria. For
  individual foods, the sodium content cannot
  exceed 360mg/serving and for a meal-type product
  it cant exceed 480 mg/serving/

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Health Claims

• The FDA allows claims for 10 relationships
  between a nutrient or a food and the risk of a
  disease or health-related condition. The claim
  must meet the requirements for authorized health
  claims- for example they cannot state the degree
  of risk reduction and can only use may or
  might when discussing the nutrient/
  food-disease relationship.
• The claims must be phrased so that consumers can
  understand the relationship between the nutrient
  and the disease and the nutrients importance in
  relationship to a daily diet.
• Example- While many factors affect heart
  disease, diet low in saturated fat and
  cholesterol may reduce the risk of this disease

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10 Nutrient-Disease relationship Claims

• Calcium and Osteoporosis
• Fat and Cancer
• Saturated fat and cholesterol and coronary heart
  disease (CHD)
• Fiber-containing grain products, fruits and
  vegetables and cancer
• Fruits, vegetables and grain products that
  contain fiber and risk of CHD
• Sodium and hypertension
• Fruits and vegetables and cancer
• Folic acid and neural tube defects
• Dietary sugar alcohols and dental caries
  (cavities)
• Soluble fiber from certain food, such as whole
  oats and psyllium seed husk, and heart disease.

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Ingredients List

• Ingredients are listed on food labels from the
  highest to the lowest amount. This means if
  sugar is listed first, it is the ingredient
  found in the food in the highest amount.
• Example Life Cereal- 100 Wholegrain oats
• Ingredients whole oat flour, sugar, corn flour,
  rice flour

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Nutrition Information
without the Label

• Just because restaurants do not have nutrition
  labels available, does not mean you dont have
  access to the information.
• Many fast food and chain restaurants have all the
  nutrition information available on their website.
• There are also websites that are dedicated to
  finding fast food nutrition information
• http//www.olen.com/food, http//www.chowbaby.com,
  
• http//www.cyberdiet.com/reg/ffq,
• http//www.fatcalories.com/